5/08/2015

''' BIG-BAD-READY TO MAKE MONEY :

INSTAGRAM '''

FROM STAY-AT-HOME MOMS to full-time Instagrammers, many loyal followers, have parlayed their hobby into a lucrative career.

Today many professional photographers are finding that Instagram can be a good way to promote and complement their work.

One example is David Guttenfieder, a veteran photojournalist who has travelled the world for the Associated Press, winning a World Press Photo Award seven times.

In 2013, when he got access to North Korea to spend a year chronicling the lives of everyday citizens, he began publishing a portion of his work on Instagram. His feed, which now boasts 349,000 followers-

Became a repository of for photos snapped quickly of small curiosities. Time named him the 2013 Instagram Photographer of the Year,

Systrom and Krieger think all of this cool, but they are mostly focused on making Instagram work really well and really fast. Systrom get visibly excited, says the author, when discussing things like latency -the time delay between when you summon your photo stream and when it appears.

Just later and for over three months the duo had cut the time it takes for an image to render by two-thirds. For a communications platform to work, it needs to be absolutely reliable all the time-

And dependability and ease of use were big reasons Instagram took off rather rather than early photo-app rivals such as PicPlz and Hipstamatic.

''It came down to a simple, clear product built for speed of sharing, and the laser focus on a single-use case, sharing photo with friends, allowed it to spread easily,'' says Taylor Davidson, a professional photographer who is a also a venture capitalist investing in photo-related startups.

In a hotel lobby in downtown Austin, skateboarding legend Tony Hawk whips out his iPhone to display the photo he's just uploaded to Instagram.

In six hours the X Games will start, and he has captured a skate ramp set up in front of the Texas Capitol, perfectly framing the building. So far it has more than 25,000 likes.

Hawk was one of the first celebrities to embrace Instagram. He found it on his own in 2011 by checking out what the teenage skateboarders he coached were using. Hawk, 47, has 1.4 million followers.

Unlike many other celebrities, he controls his own profile and takes most of the photos himself. Instagram has become his primary marketing vehicle for his events and his announcements about Activision's line of Tony Hank videogames.

''Initially Activision would kind of get annoyed with me if I let it slip on Instagram before a games's launch was announced,'' says Hawk. But his accident marketing seemed to work. ''Now they encourage it,'' he says.

As with most advertising on Instagram right now, the company doesn't profit Hawk's success directly. Despite significant advertiser demand, it has been slow to roll out advertising products.

Systrom says he and Krieger don't want to screw anything up by moving too fast. The company finally launched its first sponsored-ads product by testing 10 campaigns.

In Facebook's most recent earning call, COO Sandberg pointed to the success of one campaign for Levi's, which featured pictures of denim-clad people in gorgeous outdoor locations.

The ad targeted 18 to 34 and reached some 7.4 million people, according to Facebook.

Sandberg held it up as success, saying that it ''drove a 24-point lift in ad recall, which was three times the control group.''

Early marketing efforts often achieve outsize success on social media because the advertising takes users by surprise, and they pay attention. But Systrom is putting unusual emphasis on quality so as not to alienate his users.

In choosing its first 10 advertisers, Instagram was careful to select brands that that would appeal naturally to Instagram's audience. Systrom personally reviews every ad designed for Instagram, and he isn't shy about offering critiques.

When Airbnb advertised on the site recently, Systrom initially sent the proposed photographs of exotic Airbnb location back to his team, asking them to make better use of the location feature on the caption- To indicate where a photo was taken.

''I thought they could get more out of it,'' says Systrom.

The Honour and Serving of ''technology operational research'' on this great company, Instagram, continues. Thank you for reading, and maybe -learning something.

With respectful dedication to all the Students of the world. See Ya all on !WOW! -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless: